Thinking through making happens in my studio at each step-by-step stage. An eventual working-out occurs as I puzzle through each part of building up three-dimensional forms. The work moves forward or backward when I am at the edges of not-knowing and continues to evolve like that throughout the process of making.
Kitty Wales, Longhorn, photo, 8 x 10 in.
Kitty Wales, Broken Sleep, steel, expanded metal, variable dimensions (photo: Ken Richardson).
Kitty Wales, Rhum Goat, photo, 8 x 10 in.
Kitty Wales, Road Rhuminant, steel, tire treads, mufflers, unraveled sisal, variable dimensions (photo: Ron Labbe).
My projects are often inspired by research and are usually installation and site-specific based. A particular animal or grouping of animals might lead to my applying for field research grants to observe them in their natural habitat. Longhorn cattle in Texas, feral goats on Rhum Island off Scotland, and Caribbean reef sharks are subjects I’ve studied in the past. Reflecting on the experience, and the documentation, leads to drawing in the studio. The process may go through many transformations along the way, but material choices always help jumpstart things.
Kitty Wales, Kenmore and Amana, steel, appliance parts, 180 x 108 x 12 in.
Discarded objects have always been what I choose to work with. Salvaged from domestic life, they retain recognizable histories and purposes I like to explore. I’ve found tire treads, domestic fencing, or household appliances in scrap yards and transfer stations. Chairs, other broken furniture, and old suitcases come from friends, swap shops, and dumpsters. Accumulating enough material to create sculptural settings is a necessary but time-consuming first step. Adapting to the inherent boundaries I find in them often shifts my direction and can change the focus of the work.
Kitty Wales, Bolaños, charcoal, graphite, and watercolor pencils on paper, 36 x 20 in.
Kitty Wales, Bolaños (detail), paper pulp, epoxy clay, watercolor pencils on recycled wood, 20 x 25 in. (photo: Stewart Clements).
When trouble-shooting, I might switch to different activities in and out of the studio. Changing perspective from 3D to 2D helps. Sketching with charcoal and watercolor pencils on paper is a more fluid method for figuring out spatial relationships and color. Changing how a work sits in a space; whether on the wall, or the floor, or hanging from the ceiling is another way to adjust direction. During parts of every day I also try to get out of the chaos of the work space. Going for a long walk or swimming in the ocean can bring some clarity to problem solving.
Kitty Wales, Migration, steel, recycled chairs, epoxy clay, watercolor pencils, graphite, horse hair, variable dimensions.
Recently I’ve been repurposing chair parts to build foundations for wall sculptures. These become an important base layer connecting all the different narratives that rest on them. The very act of sawing, sanding, and chiseling the different components and organizing them in coherent piles can trigger insight.
There is a fair amount of disorder and ambiguity as stages are constructed. Once wooden parts come together and are attached in a workable shape, I cover them with layers of paper. This gives a unified surface I can draw on with watercolor pencils, when dry.
Kitty Wales, Maya Codex of Mexico, mixed media on bark paper, 5 x 10 in.
The narrative theme of the current work began in 2019, after discovering Mayan Codices in the Anthropology Museum in Mexico City. Those painted manuscripts document bloodlines, history, science, and sacred rituals of Mesoamerican cultures. Within tight frameworks they display a colorful pictorial language activated by symbols and characters. I adapted that format of recorded history to story board stages of wall assemblages, as well as some of their color palette. My grandfather was hired as a mining engineer in Mexico right after serving in WWI, and he wrote about his time exploring abandoned mines on horseback in the mountains of Bolaños. His colorful stories inspired many parts of my drawing and object making.
Kitty Wales, Mining in Pachuca, hand-colored etching on paper, 15 x 12 in.
During construction of these wall works, I placed sculptures of domestic objects within their crevices and niches. Vessels were chosen for their shape and gesture, but also as historical icons reanimating the memories they hold. To create them I layered color and texture with a mix of materials and paper pulp to build up the shape. Throughout the process of fabrication, the utilitarian forms change. While many of the surfaces are visible, others are buried, erased, or altered. In this process the objects in their placements become domestic stages for the passage of time.
Kitty Wales, Pachuca, aqua resin, epoxy clay, paper pulp, watercolor pencils on wood, 26 x 28 x 8 in. (photo: Dave Clough).
All my projects take steady effort to reach a satisfactory finish, although some never get there and are rejected or recycled into other concepts. Physical choice of medium helps develop my direction, scale defines viewpoints, and research can lead the way forward. Issues in life and community invariably filter into the thought process. This all seeps into the anatomy of my work and is part of the alchemy of thinking through making.
Image at top: Kitty Wales, Drift, paper pulp, epoxy clay, fabric, watercolor pencils, on recycled wood, 149 x 84 x 24 in. (photo: David Clough).